It's One Big Joke in the Oval Office
Eli Lehrer, Insight on the News, March 1, 1999 , p. 34 .
Impeached and disgraced former president Al Franken sometimes makes sense. "Bill Clinton bent over backwards to have a Cabinet that looks like America," Franken says. "I figured that it was more important to have a Cabinet the president would be comfortable with - an all-Jewish one, in my case."
For the most part, however, Franken's failings in office had little to do with the lack of diversity in his Cabinet. Franken's surprise victory in the 2000 presidential election came after a hard-fought campaign run entirely on the issue of automatic-teller-machine fees. His presidency itself, however, accomplished little. Franken clumsily ruptured Nelson Mandela's spleen soon after taking office, tried to redeem his historical legacy by flying Air Force One to Iraq in an effort to assassinate Saddam Hussein and had a clone of himself implanted into actress Anne Heche's uterus.
After a joint congressional inquiry about Franken's mood swings and a unanimous senatorial vote to remove him from office, Franken was out on the street (although free and clear, thanks to a pardon he gave himself) after only 144 days in office. Not everything turned out poorly, as Franken's presidency led to the 19-year golden era of the Joseph Lieberman administration.
While all of this is fiction, it makes more sense than it probably should in Franken's new book, Why Not Me? The Inside Story of the Making and Un-making of the Franken Presidency. On the banks of the Potomac, this book by the Saturday Night Live alum turned Lateline star quickly has become the hottest piece of political humor since Christopher Buckley's best-seller The White House Mess. Unlike Buckley's book and other political fiction ranging from Robert Penn Warren's All The King's Men to Joel Klein's Primary Colors, Franken's book takes place in a real (if heavily skewed) world. Politicians and pundits from all across the political spectrum make cameos, and several have major roles.
Franken says that he wrote the book after friends and acquaintances suggested he run for office. "I had just written Rush Limbaugh Is a Big, Fat Idiot and Other Observations [a book of humorous political essays] and there were some people coming up to me and suggesting that I run for office," he says. "I knew that would be a mistake because I'd make a perfectly terrible president, and I wrote the book to prove it." The project began inauspiciously with a Bob Woodward parody called "Rush Limbaugh's Butt Is Big and Smelly" which Franken wrote and then, thankfully, decided not to publish. "It had all this unnecessary detail that's so characteristic of Woodward's style. After I set it aside, I really started on a book, and one of the first ideas was that I should have an all-Jewish Cabinet."
The book consists of three major sections: Franken's "campaign biography" Daring to Lead, a diary of his hard-fought primary campaign, and The Void "by Bob Woodward," which describes the unraveling of Franken's presidency. "There are bits of truth in it," Franken says. "The effort to assassinate Saddam Hussein comes from every Jewish kid's fantasy of killing Hitler. Once when I was on Politically Incorrect, I said, `If someone had come along and killed Hitler, someone just as bad would have come along.' Michael Reagan, who also was on, screamed out `Yes, exactly!' Of course he was wrong. I've always had a fantasy to kill that guy." One assumes, of course, that Franken was talking about Hitler.
After Franken himself, the biggest role in the book goes to his imagined campaign manager and then chief of staff, the American Enterprise Institute's Norman Ornstein. Ornstein says that in reality he would never consider taking a political job outside of the think tank's plush offices. "Truth is, I like being where I am," he says. "I also don't like the parts about me wiping my ass with leaves, going to jail or changing my name to Sri Bhagwan Muktananda, and I do all of these things in the book. I really don't care, because the book is very funny." Ornstein says he first met Franken at a party during the 1988 presidential campaign. The two hit it off and became good friends.
Ornstein, indeed, played a significant role bringing a level of verisimilitude to the book's ridiculous chain of events. "We talk on the phone several times a week," he says of Franken. "He would often call me to ask how to get technical things right. He would hang out [at the institute] too." Ornstein says that the various campaign-strategy memos that he "writes" in the book - including one in which "he" classifies nearly everything the campaign does into "very illegal," "illegal," "possibly illegal" and "legal but questionable" activities - have a ring of truth. Ornstein's photo appears just behind Franken on the book's front cover. "They just called me up and said can you come down for a picture," he says. "I did. They did something to fix my hair, but it still looks like I need a shave."
Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who met Franken during the 1992 presidential campaign, also is in the book as the pollster for Franken's campaign. Throughout, Franken refers to Luntz as a "starf----r" who comes to help because he's attracted to Franken's, um, celebrity aura. Luntz says that he doesn't mind the way he's depicted in the book. "I hit it off with Al as soon as we met for the first time," he says. "Al Franken is so wrong about every political issue it hardly matters. He's the only person I know, maybe the only person on Earth, who actually voted for [liberal Democrat] Ruth Messinger in the New York mayoral election."
Luntz has other reasons for believing that Franken would make a poor candidate. The pollster says of a photo in the book showing Franken throwing reams of polling data at Luntz: "I came to New York and we set up the photo shoot in a hotel room. He really enjoyed going around and throwing polling data at me. I'd never, ever take him as a client, and he'd make a terrible president, but I guess he already knows that."
Dick Morris, the presidential adviser turned New York Post columnist, says he doesn't mind a depiction that's even less flattering. Right in the middle of the book Morris comes in to save the day for Franken's lackluster campaign. First, Morris creates the "Weeping Snoopy" campaign commercial, which includes Charlie Brown telling Snoopy "Grandma and Grandpa ate all the dog food so there's none left for you. Apparently the banks took all their money by charging excessive ATM fees, and now they have to eat dog food until they die." Then Morris spearheads the creation of a flamboyant gay group that loudly "supports" Gore during the primaries in socially conservative Iowa.
"Well, I thought that the book was funny, and I do save the campaign," Morris says. "The unhappy ending is no more unhappy than the one that I had with the last campaign I worked on. Anyway, I liked the idea of Franken running for president only after his therapist said that it was okay."
Although Morris originally told Insight that he had read the book, he later admitted otherwise. "I only paged through it to make sure that there was nothing really terrible said about me," he admits, sounding vaguely like a certain former boss of his.
Howard Fineman, the Washington bureau chief for Newsweek magazine, also comes on board as Franken's press secretary. The real Fineman came up with the idea of running a campaign against ATM fees. "Al got together with me, Norm Ornstein and Mandy Grunwald for lunch at the Palm [restaurant in Washington]," Fineman says. "We were batting around all sorts of ideas and at some point I guess I brought up the issue of ATM fees." Franken says that he chose the issue for a reason. "It's a small issue that really resonates with the middle-middle-class soccer-mom voter that everyone is going after. After all, Al D'Amato did pick it up," he says.
A Newsweek puff piece "by Fineman" about Franken's campaign for the presidency appears in the middle of Why Not Me? "I think Howard thought that I was going to try to get him to write it," says Franken. "In the end, I just sent it to him and he made a few suggestions and that was that." Fineman has some complaints about the piece. "It's not nearly cliche-ridden enough," he laments. "Still, he did a pretty good job." The Newsweek bureau chief says he never would accept a job as a press secretary - "well, not for less than $1 million a year," he admits. "I like what I do now."
Of course, not everyone in Franken's book has a real Washington job. Dan Haggerty, an actor known for playing Grizzly Adams on TV, also plays a leading role in Franken's campaign and, during the short-lived Franken administration, is appointed ambassador to the Court of St. James's (Great Britain).
Reached in his Tarzana, Calif., home, Haggerty says that he hadn't heard about the book until Insight asked him for comment. He says he has no recollection of meeting Franken. "Maybe we met somewhere along the campaign trail; maybe I blazed a trail for him through the woods when I was feeding walnuts to squirrels or maybe I helped him out of a snowbank," says Haggerty. "If I get to be involved in the administration, I'd put my claws into Congress and scratch my way to the top."
Haggerty says that he was anxious to read the book. "I'm going to rub two sticks together to make some fire so I can see to read it," he tells Insight.
Although his grandfather was president of the AFL-CIO, Haggerty's political involvement has been limited to occasional visits with politicians and testimonies on Christian radio stations. "The only thing I've been president of is my own fan club," he says. Asked if he would accept an appointment to the Court of St. James's, Haggerty doesn't hesitate. "Sure, I would accept it," he says. "Are you kidding? I'd straighten that place right out. Drop those goofy hats, have those people live a little. If you want, I'd do it right now. They should have a Mexican restaurant in that palace."